EXCLUSIVE: Missing Women inquiry costs soar as police ‘lawyer up’

Daily legal fees near $80,000 at missing women commission

The Missing Women Inquiry, headed by Wally Oppal, has cost taxpayers more than $4 million so far.

Photograph by: Ian Smith
, PNG

The Missing Women inquiry has cost taxpayers more than $4 million so far, an amount that is expected to climb as more police officers “lawyer up” to defend against allegations that have arisen over the last four months.

Many officers and former officers at the inquiry, which has heard details of the failures of the Vancouver police and the RCMP to arrest serial killer Robert Pickton sooner, are using top criminal lawyers, who charge as much as $500 an hour or more.

There now are 24 lawyers at the inquiry, most of whom are representing police and former police.

While the province is footing the bill for the inquiry, it isn’t paying for the officers’ lawyers. Those costs, now being shouldered by the officers’ employers, will filter down to taxpayers in other ways.

The finger-pointing at the inquiry in recent weeks has caused a number of former officers, including former Vancouver police chief Terry Blythe and Gary Bass, former commander of the RCMP in B.C., to hire legal counsel to defend their reputations.

Blythe reached out to the Toronto law firm of Eddie Greenspan, Canada’s most famous lawyer, to represent him through Vanessa Christie, the latest counsel to join the fray.

The RCMP’s Bass has retained Richard Peck, a senior criminal lawyer whom the B.C. government often retains as a special prosecutor.

It has been estimated the daily billings for legal counsel at the inquiry could be as high as $80,000 a day.

Much of that cost is being paid by the Vancouver police department and the federal Department of Justice, which represents the RCMP.

The police forces have indemnity agreements to cover the cost of legal proceedings arising from an officer’s employment, provided they were acting in good faith at the time.

The B.C. Attorney-General’s Ministry is paying for the inquiry’s staff and lawyers, as well as for two lawyers representing the victims’ families.

B.C. Attorney-General Shirley Bond issued a statement Friday saying while the total cost of the inquiry will not be available until after it concludes, the current cost has exceeded $4 million.

“These costs include lawyers preparing for the hearings, the costs related to facilities and security for the hearings, travel and accommodation expenses for participants and witnesses and other expenses,” Bond said.

“While there was no legal requirement to fund participants in public inquiries, our government made it a priority to fund those participants in the inquiry who have been directly impacted — namely the families of the missing or murdered women.”

The cost of the lawyers for police are not being paid by the B.C. government, Bond said.

Testimony from a series of senior police officers who worked on the case or were in a supervisory role begins this week.

Former attorney-general Ujjal Dosanjh and former Vancouver mayor Philip Owen are also expected to testify in the near future.

Don Adam, the former team leader of the joint forces Pickton investigation operation formed in late 2000, is expected to testify today.

The inquiry must deliver its report to government by the end of June, after being granted a six-month extension last year.

Hearings began last Oct. 11 and are expected to continue until the end of April.

On Monday, the inquiry heard the legal arguments of lawyer Neil Chantler, who along with Cameron Ward is representing the families of 25 murdered women.

He is seeking further document disclosure, an issue Ward has repeatedly complained about at the inquiry.

Last week, Ward argued that he should be given the unpublished book manuscript of Vancouver police Det.-Const. Lori Shenher, a key investigator in the Pickton case.

The inquiry was told that Shenher’s Pickton book contract with McClelland & Stewart was cancelled in May 2003, shortly after the first media stories appeared about the officer writing a book.

David Crossin, the lawyer for the Vancouver Police Union, argued the book contains Shenher’s private thoughts about the Pickton investigation and her privacy rights would be violated if it was made public.

Meanwhile, protesters gathered Monday outside 701 West Georgia, where the inquiry takes place, to denounce it as a “sham,” given that the majority of women’s groups and first nations organizations withdrew from it because the provincial government refused to provide them with legal funding.

The rally precedes the 21st annual Women’s Memorial March, which is held on Valentine’s Day each year to honour the memory of Downtown Eastside women who have died from physical violence or mental, emotional and spiritual abuse.

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